IN MEMORY OF GENERAL SCLATER.
12
The Ypres Times.
It is with pleasure that I accept the invitation of the Ypres League that I should write
a short article about my life-long and valued friend, Sir Henry Sclater, who died at the
end of last September to the great sorrow of all who knew him. His was in many ways
a very remarkable and distinguished career, memorable not only for its services to the
State, but because it supplies a very salient example of a life governed throughout by the
strongest sense of duty coupled with a warm regard and consideration for the officers and
men with whom he served.
I knew him as a cadet at Woolwich where, bright, good-natured, studious and con
siderate he endeared himself to all. Then as a subaltern R.H.A. I served with him again
and found him just the same.
He got his commission as Lieutenant R.A. in January, 1875, joined a battery in
Ireland, went with it to Aldershot, and quickly made his mark as a smart, hard-working
officer. From the first he meant to get on, and his ardent wish was to go on service.
Twice when his desire was all but realised was he disappointed. In 1881 Lord Roberts
took him to the war with the Boers, but the peace of Majuba supervened and he and his
staff were sent home without hearing a shot fired. Again in 1882 he was selected for active
service, but Lord Wolseley's masterly stroke ended the war before Sclater got further
than Cyprus, and was sent back to his battery at home. On promotion to Captain in
1883 he joined a battery in Egypt and thus was enabled at length to see service with the
Nile Expeditionary Force in 1884-85, and afterwards became D.A.A.G. at Headquarters
in Cairo. For his services he received a brevet majority in 1885. He also served with the
Egyptian Frontier Force, 1885-1886, as D.A. and Q.M.G., and was present at Giniss.
In 1890, Lord Wolseley took him from Egypt to his staff at Dublin, and when he became
Commander-in-Chief of the Army in 1895, he carried Sclater with him to Pall Mall as
D.A.I.G. of ordinance. From thence at the end of 1898 Sclater went to Aldershot as
Brigade-Major R.A., and in the following autumn went to South Africa as Staff Officer
to the C.R.A. A year later the waras a warbeing over, Lord Roberts and many others
returned home, and Lord Kitchener, who took over command, appointed Sclater to be
his Artillery adviser. In that capacity Sclater ran the artillery in South Africa till the
war ended in 1902. And with such success that Lord Roberts at once sent for him (now
promoted Colonel) to Pall Mall to assist him in re-arming our batteries. Meanwhile Lord
Kitchenerjhad become Commander-in-Chief in India, and in 1904 when he was occupied
in reorganising the Indian Army he asked for Sclater to be sent out to hjm to assist him
as Q.M.G. Now Sclater had never been in India in his life, and the Q.M.G.'s duties in
that country are of special importance and deal with matters quite peculiar to it. To
have been selected for the post was a very high compliment. Sclater took it up, and he
and Lord Kitchener made a great success of the Indian Army re-organisation. In 1909
after a spell in command of the Lucknow Division, Sclater was in command at Quetta,
where he stayed for three years. Then he returned to England and had a prolonged
holiday for almost the first time in his life. But in the beginning of 1914 the strange
episode of the intended coercion of Ulster, the refusal of many officers and men from
highest to lowest to take part in it, the subsequent discomfiture of the Ministry, and the
usual finding and sacrifice of scapegoats, called upon Sclater to replace the Adjutant-
General of the Army. Then followed the Great War, and Lord Kitchener and his trusted
friend were soon grappling with mobilisation and the raising of new formations. In two
years the strain proved too great for the Adjutant-General, and he went to the Southern
Command where till 1919 he worked in the usual unrelenting fashion he had always
